Surgical instruments typically employed in applications such as orthopedics and oral surgery, in the ablation or cutting of hard tissue or bone, include high speed oscillating saws, manual saws or chisels. For example, depicted in FIG. 1 is an oscillating saw that may be operated by hand or that may be caused to vibrate by a motor in order to cut through a relatively large bone. A handle 10 has a cutting blade 20 disposed at the end of the handle. A sawing motion perpendicular to a direction of travel 30 can be used to saw through bone tissue 40. Devices such as these produce a cutting effect using friction. Friction, however, produces heat and the heat can cause the death of cells near the cut zone due to thermal necrosis.